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Margery Allingham’s The Mind Readers

Margery Allingham’s The Mind Readers

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Allingham MindLately I’ve been looking at SF-like inventions or discoveries that turn up in crime/mystery novels, first with John D. MacDonald‘s The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything, and then with a variation on that same invention in an SF mystery, Spider Robinson‘s Kill the Editor/Lady Slings the Booze. This put me in mind of another example of mystery meets SF in Margery Allingham’s The Mind Readers (1965).

Allingham (1904-1966) is considered one of the mystery writers of the British Golden Age, along with Christie, Sayers, and their ilk, and her earlier novels certainly have a touch of that Jazz Age charm.

At first glance Albert Campion seems to be another variation on the gentleman sleuth with a friend on the force, a la Sayer’s Lord Peter Wimsey. The reader is given clear hints from time to time that he’s probably a younger son of a noble family, like Wimsey, but we never see Albert in family situations. He doesn’t live like a rich man, or a rich man’s son, and while it’s also pretty clear that “Albert Campion” is a pseudonym, we never learn his real name. Instead of the traditional English manservant, Albert employs Lugg, a former cat-burglar who’s lost his figure. Their relationship provides a great deal of the humour in the novels, but these books aren’t written for laughs. The characters may not take themselves very seriously, but they are serious about their work.

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Goth Chick News: A (Sort of) Jaws Prequel With a Whole Lot of Whaaaat?

Goth Chick News: A (Sort of) Jaws Prequel With a Whole Lot of Whaaaat?

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Jaws swimming

I have no problem admitting that Jaws is in my top five favorite movies of all time. Granted, some of that love is of the “point in time” sort; as in it was the first R-rated movie I was ever allowed to see, it was the first time I saw special effects approaching realistic (I had been on a steady diet of classic horror movies since I was 8) and it was the first time I had a concrete method of expressing my fear of deep water (“Sharks!”). Forgetting of course, that the closest I had ever come to salt water was the Shedd Aquarium.

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Shut Up, You Freak!!

Shut Up, You Freak!!

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Shut Up You Freak-small

Recently, as I watched the San Antonio Spurs pummel and demoralize the Oklahoma City Thunder, I was pummeled and demoralized myself, as I was smacked with a halftime commercial for the upcoming movie Alice Through the Looking Glass. Combine this with the recent rumors of a Beetlejuice sequel, and the conclusion is inescapable: it’s sixteen years into the twenty first century, and we haven’t learned a thing. Tim Burton just isn’t going to go away, and apparently there’s nothing that we can do to make him go away. (I know that the new Alice isn’t being directed by Burton, but he’s responsible for it in the same way that Nixon was responsible for the depredations of Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy.)

The man is seemingly bulletproof; no number of Rubberstamped, predictable, underperforming movies can stop him. “Tim Burton” is a firmly established pop culture brand, and it hardly matters that he hasn’t directed a good movie since the end of the last century. (I do make a partial exception for Big Fish, which wasn’t good, but was at least an ambitious, honorable failure. It also seemed to take something out of Burton; he’s never tried anything nearly as serious since.)

How did it come to this? Back in the day, I liked Batman, Ed Wood, and The Nightmare Before Christmas as much as anyone. I was initially underwhelmed by Mars Attacks but later came to appreciate it. Now, however, I greet the announcement of every new Tim Burton project in precisely the same way I greet every new American commitment in the Middle East: “Oh God — we’ve already done this, and it never works!”

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Vintage Trash: Producers Releasing Corporation, the Poorest of Hollywood’s Poverty Row

Vintage Trash: Producers Releasing Corporation, the Poorest of Hollywood’s Poverty Row

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Strangler_of_the_Swamp_poster

The 1930s through 1950s are generally seen as Hollywood’s Golden Age. It was a time when major studios had glamorous stars and made blockbuster pictures with casts of thousands.

It was also a time when cheap production companies ground out quickie films on a shoestring budget, and sometimes, just sometimes, created something worth watching.

Welcome to Poverty Row, the result of the world’s insatiable appetite for film. In the days before television, many people went to the movies every day. Not only did they get a movie, but they also got a newsreel, cartoon, and a shorter “B” movie. Neighborhood theaters often showed B-movies as features since they were cheaper to rent and the audience of local kids didn’t care about great production quality, they just wanted to see some cowboys shooting it up. And that’s where Poverty Row came in.

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Star Trek Continues Fundraiser

Star Trek Continues Fundraiser

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trek continues crewThe final days of the newest Star Trek Continues fundraiser are upon us. If you haven’t seen my rave reviews of some of the previous episodes, go take a look — and then drop by their site and watch some of the episodes!

If you’re a fan of the original Star Trek television show, you owe it to yourself to go watch these loving recreations  made by extremely talented volunteers. You’ll swear that these are the same sets, and you’ll swear that most of these scripts were found in the file cabinet of D.C. Fontana or Gene L. Coon.

Last year’s fund raiser (or KIRKstarter, heh) got the funds for a few more episodes AND an engineering room set, which is now complete (you can see a virtual tour on this page). The new fundraiser will help pay for more episodes, rent at the facility where they’re filming the episodes, and pay for some expensive post production on one of the episodes they’ve just finished filming.

If this sounds up your alley (or in your sector) don’t delay. There are only a few days left to help out.

Notes from the Underground: Tremors & Tremors 2: Aftershocks

Notes from the Underground: Tremors & Tremors 2: Aftershocks

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Tremors Kevn Bacon Fred Ward

Tremors (1990)
Directed by Ron Underwood

Earl Bassett: What kind of fuse is that?
Burt Gummer: Cannon fuse
Earl Bassett: What the hell do you use it for?
Burt Gummer: My cannon!

Will Tremors, the movie, go down through the ages as a great and enduring work of art? Nah. Is it a pretty good monster movie and perhaps even one of the better examples of the breed? I would argue that it is.

Once upon a time — the Fifties, to be more specific — there was a flood of movies about giant critters of various shapes and sizes wreaking havoc in assorted and sundry ways. Once in a while the planets would align just so and someone might turn out a pretty decent one of these. Them, a yarn about rampaging giant ants, springs to mind.

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Goth Chick News: Again With That Damn Clown…

Goth Chick News: Again With That Damn Clown…

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Pennywise the Clown

In the spring of 2015, production was ready to begin on a brand new rebooted, two-film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 novel IT, with Cary Fukunaga (True Detective) in the director’s chair. Creative differences led Fukunaga to depart the project, creating an indefinite delay and uncertainty as to whether the two-film approach would remain.

However, last week it was announced that Andy Muschietti (Mama) has taken over the directorial reins, and we’ve now learned that the cameras will begin rolling in June; on both films.

Stephen King himself took to Facebook to share a link from Entertainment Weekly confirming a September 8, 2017 release date, and explaining why the approach isn’t really milking the potential audience.

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Vintage Trash: Reel Wild Cinema Free Online (and Legal!)

Vintage Trash: Reel Wild Cinema Free Online (and Legal!)

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rwcinema

As many of you will remember, back in the 1980s and 90s there was a huge increase of interest in old B movies. People of my generation who had grown up watching “Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster” on rainy Saturday afternoons, or snuck down to the TV room to catch Creature Features on the late late show, were now in college or work and had money to spend. Suddenly VCRs across the nation were being filled with monster films, 1930s exploitation films, Italian Mondo films, and every other kind of vintage oddity. It was a wave of ironic nostalgia that put the later hipster movement to shame.

Magazines like Psychotronic Video and Cult Movies Magazine were crammed with articles about obscure directors and their output, along with lots of great movie stills and posters. There were also ads for various film distributors, one of the most popular being Something Weird Video.

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Making Myth in a Digital Alexandria

Making Myth in a Digital Alexandria

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Xena-cerchioDid you hear about the Xena reboot? How about the new Voltron series? Twin Peaks is re-launching this summer, and you may already have your tickets to the next comic book movie.

What is up with that? Is Hollywood completely out of ideas? Have they gotten so risk-averse that all they can do is recycle old material? Or is it simply nostalgia run amok, a nation full of millennials who don’t want to grow up?

I think it’s something different, and something pretty exciting. I don’t think our love of reboots is a lack of creativity at all. In fact, I think this is an incredibly vibrant artistic period, and is about to become even more so.

Why? Because we’ve seen this before. Bear with me, guys.

The Hellenistic period of the Ancient World begins with the death of Alexander the Great and extends until the rise of the Roman Empire. There, we got our hard facts out of the way. You may even remember that from history class.

Historians like their categories, and periods of history broken down into neat charts with clear defining events.

But in this case, we can talk about the way Ancient Mediterranean Culture shifted dramatically in a very short period of time. We became more and more able to talk about a Mediterranean culture, for one. The disparate cultures of Greece, the Near East, Northern Africa, and the Italian peninsula came into much closer contact because of Alexander’s Imperial ambitions. Trade had existed before, but the construction of travel networks and large cities allowed for an even greater exchange of information.

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The Exhumation of Myra Maynard

The Exhumation of Myra Maynard

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mysteries-of-myra-book-225x320myra1Most people have never heard of The Mysteries of Myra, much less seen the surviving footage. This 1916 silent serial was produced by publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst and directed by The Wharton Brothers for The Whartons Studio in Ithaca, New York. As late as the early talkie era, New York was still a rival for Hollywood with Paramount Pictures based on the East Coast until the early 1930s. The Mysteries of Myra was intended to carry on the tradition of The Perils of Pauline and The Exploits of Elaine, it was the work of the same screenwriter of those two lucrative serials, Charles Goddard, but The Mysteries of Myra was very different from any serial before or since in terms of structure and content.

Charles Goddard’s 15 chapter screenplay was developed from an original story treatment by real life occult detective, Hereward Carrington. Dr. Carrington was a member of the infamous Society for Psychical Research and a colleague of Harry Houdini. While a skeptic who exposed many false claims of psychic phenomena and hauntings, Dr. Carrington was also a believer in demonic possession, the afterlife, and other preternatural occurrences. The hero of the piece, Dr. Payson Alden, occult detective is clearly based on Hereward Carrington. The Mysteries of Myra is concerned with Dr. Alden’s efforts to save heiress Myra Maynard from the occult society, The Black Order and to win her heart from her contemptible fiancé , Arthur Varney, who is the right hand man of The Grand Master of The Black Order.

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